In August 2016, heavy monsoon rains pushed the Ganges and other rivers in eastern and central India to the breaking point.These images use a combination of infrared and visible light to increase contrast between water and land. Water is blue. Vegetation is green. Notice that the water is a slightly lighter shade of blue in the lower image due to all the suspended sediment in the water.

Floods can be devastating, and they can be surreal too, seen from space. This below, thanks to NASA Earth Observatory, shows a flood event in 2011 that looks like a giant bulldozer having widened the whole James River, meanwhile smoothing out all the twists and turns along the way.

A tributary of the Missouri River, the James River experienced significant flooding in the spring of 2011. In early June 2011, the river was high enough to fill the river valley near the town of Mitchell, South Dakota.

Flood waters continue to rise on the Amur (Heilongjiang) River and its tributaries in northeast China and southeast Russia. The floods are affecting millions, forcing evacuations, closing ports, and claiming at least 85 lives. The floods are expected to peak in early September.

Summer rains have swollen rivers throughout northeastern China, including the Songhua River. Water levels peaked in Harbin on August 27, 2013, and have remained high. The Songhua River is one of many tributaries of the Amur (Heilongjiang) River, which is experiencing its most severe floods in a century.

The recent floods followed months of devastating drought, China Daily reported. Prior to the torrential rains, 3.5 million people endured water shortages. Although the rain brought much-needed moisture, it also brought deadly floods and landslides. As of June 28, nearly 100 people had died and about 27,000 homes had been destroyed.

NASA reminded me again of its satellite images of the Three Gorges Dam before and after the construction of the dam. Here below I dug up the before and after images and present in a simple GIF, watch for the tremendous expansion of the water surface on the Yangtze River and its numerous tributaries in this mountainous region:

Three Gorges Dam: 2000-2006 Views from Satellite (via NASA)

Here below is another extreme case of changes, the human extraction of water largely contributing to the sudden shrinking of reservoir along the Euphrates River:

Shrinking of Qadisiyah Reservoir between 2006 and 2009 (via NASA)

Scientists using the twin gravity-measuring satellites of the Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE)have found that a large portion of the Middle East lost freshwater reserves rapidly during the past decade. The research team observed the Tigris and Euphrates river basins—including parts of Turkey, Syria, Iraq, and Iran—and found that 117 million acre feet (144 cubic kilometers) of fresh water was lost from 2003 to 2009. That amount is roughly equivalent to the volume of the Dead Sea. About 60 percent of the loss was attributed to the pumping of groundwater from underground reservoirs.